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The Australia Defence Association's public-interest watchdog role integrally involves the promotion of informed public debate on defence and wider national security issues. This naturally includes the ADA contributing opinion articles to newspapers, journals and on-line forums.

Text marked in red below indicates wording omitted by the publisher. Text marked in green indicates wording that has been inserted or changed by the publisher (with the original wording omitted also following in red). In a very few cases, text enclosed in square brackets has been added by us to spell out acronyms or provide context to the article for subsequent readers.

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Tuesday, 03 January 2012

The Australian and The Canberra Times

(this opinion article was derived from the comprehensive ADA discussion paper on this issue here)

 

Back to the strategic basics, not the politics or emotion, on asylum and refugee policy

 

By fixating on the recurrent symptoms, not the causes and cures, most public argument on asylum seeking continues ineffectively. Politicians are addicted to electoral point-scoring. Refugee advocates are prone to discuss factors selectively.

 

Some community concerns about “boat people” and visa-overstayers are undoubtedly due to misunderstandings and even at times irrational fears.

 

But informed concern is surely well-grounded in appreciating the risk that unauthorised and therefore uncontrolled arrivals compromise Australia's national immigration policy, sovereignty and ― should numbers increase dramatically and/or suddenly ― our domestic economic, social and political stability and our environmental sustainability.

 

Arguments commonly mounted in favour of accepting asylum seekers tend to centre on the low numbers arriving currently, or cite the Refugee Convention and world refugee statistics selectively. This does not assuage basic community concern about potentially larger numbers if policy remains so hostage to events.

 

Similarly, knee-jerk allegations of supposed xenophobia or racism are way off target where one in four Australians was born overseas and most Australians are knowledgeable about immigration matters and compassionate about genuine refugees.

 

The vast majority of Australians, even if disagreeing about aspects of refugee policy, seem to agree overwhelmingly that our national compassion must be focused using two principles:

 

·                Australia cannot possibly shelter or resettle all the world’s refugees so compassion must be applied using prioritisation and equity; and

 

·                our refugee intake, including any increases, should not occur by means outside reasonable Australian control.

 

Informed debate is therefore more over the matter of fairness, priorities and control as necessary principles, not over the responsibility to provide refuge or even the numbers to be given sanctuary in practice.

 

Too many arguing on all sides are also trapped in fallacious assumptions.

 

These include that this is wholly a domestic matter, not mainly a strategic policy issue; that our regional neighbours are uninvolved or blameless; that all asylum applications are genuine, or alternatively all bogus; that asylum means permanent residence as an immigration outcome, not protection for as long as it is needed as the Convention requires; that bogus claimants are being successfully deported when they are not; and various selective or erroneous beliefs about push and pull factors.

 

Australia’s predicament is primarily due to our geo-political situation. Only 7 of the 35 countries between the Aegean and Arafura Seas are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention.

 

Six of the seven are effectively pseudo-signatories. The nearest real signatories to our north-west are Israel and the European Union. To the north-east it’s the USA and Canada. To the north its no-one.

 

Even New Zealand takes in much fewer refugees per capita because we are who and where we are.

 

We also need to buttress the universality, integrity and original intention of the Refugee Convention and Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. Particularly the importance of pressuring neighbouring states in conflict-afflicted regions to resolve these wars in the first place, so refugees can swiftly return home directly to rebuild broken polities and societies.

 

Rather than stay marooned in refugee camps watching their civil societies and families destroyed.

 

The incidence of war or civil strife in the world generally is not a “push factor” per se, as some claim reflexively, but another recurrent symptom of the Convention not being universal.

 

The key pull factor is that Australia is a highly desirable first-world country; and one of only four with a popularly-accepted mass immigration program, a diverse society, and no national ID card so disappearing into the diversity is easy. Indeed it is the success and cultural acceptance of our immigration-based society that so skews debate away from what our Convention responsibilities actually are.

 

Since 1946 we have permanently resettled, rather than just temporarily sheltered as the Convention requires, over 700,000 refugees.

 

Apples-and-oranges comparisons with larger numbers currently hosted temporarily by some countries obfuscate proper comparisons about degrees of protection and proportionate burdens over time, and excuse buck-passing by all our regional neighbours.

 

It is axiomatic that the effective regional mechanism needed to protect refugees would involve “offshore processing” in an Australian context. But our near and further neighbours have no incentive to sign the Convention, or otherwise care for refugees, because they regard us (and the EU) as their permanent “soft-touch” solution.

 

Meanwhile:

 

·                market forces mean people-smuggling flourishes and the Refugee Convention is undermined;

 

·                around five per cent of unauthorised arrivals by boat drown due to various criminal acts in Indonesia;

 

·                our intercepting naval personnel are put at risk saving them and now need to be armed and equipped with anti-stab vests;

 

·                most boat arrivals destroy identifying documents because they are false;

 

·                our detention centres are bulging, re-filling continually and riven with violence, riots, suicide and mental stress; and

 

·                deportation rates for bogus asylum seekers have sunk to as low as two per cent, due to false claims to be “stateless” and regional non-cooperation generally.

 

Compassion must be combined with resolution and strategic realism to really help genuine refugees.

 

Turning the tap off at Indonesian and Malaysian airports is the best way to combat people smuggling and immigration fraud without affecting the right to claim asylum or our responsibility to provide it where warranted.

 

As deterrents to immigration fraud and people smuggling, we need to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas and negotiate swaps of asylum claimants. Both are right in principle. It was the administration of TPVs that was flawed last time (especially the ban on family reunion). Malaysia is the problem with swapping not the policy itself.

 

[The nine reasons to reintroduce TPVs can be found here.]

 

Offshore centres such as Manus and Nauru remain worth trying, but their deterrent value would be much diminished without TPVs and other regional countries not acceding to the Convention.

 

Current numbers of unauthorised arrivals by sea and air are manageable but the strategic, law enforcement and humanitarian effectiveness of current policy, including sustaining public confidence, is wholly dependent on the numbers remaining low and slow. But there is no longer any strategic, crime deterrent, economic migration, refugee flow, international travel complexity or public policy rationale for this complacency to succeed.

 

We are getting ever closer to having to warn our neighbours that unless they accede to the Convention, and live up to its responsibilities, we will have to suspend our membership and humanely turn boats and airline passengers back until they do.

 

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Saturday, 27 August 2011

The Newcastle Herald

Debating our wars responsibly

 

In the two world wars many Australians served in our defence force and many more in industries supporting them. Much of the rest of the community consisted of their close families. Even during the Vietnam War we had wide community participation and interest through the conscription of up to one in forty male 20-year olds.

 

But we now fight Australia’s wars with a very small, professional defence force comprised solely of volunteers. Of Australia’s six million families, only some 15,000 annually have members serving overseas with our defence force.

 

Until the mid 1970s most Australian families had parents who knew something of war. As they became grandparents, some degree of extended family knowledge lasted widely into the late 1990s. When previous generations of Australian families discussed war, and no matter whether they were for or against any Australian role, many parents or grandparents could contribute commonsense observations.

 

As actual first or second-hand experience of war has declined, several generations of TV watching since the mid 1950s has conversely resulted in many Australians wrongly believing they know war. Including the pervasive incorrect belief that wars can be easily avoided, fought or ended quickly, and with few or no casualties or strategic implications.

 

A few minutes spent reading blogsites devoted to the war in Afghanistan, or the letters page or opinion columns of our newspapers, quickly shows this trend. At best, such sampling will reveal numerous false or defeatist assumptions, frequent ahistoric examples and much simplistic argument; generally flavouring a range of preconceived notions, ideological beliefs or outright prejudices.

 

Opposing Australian participation in the UN-endorsed multinational force in Afghanistan is, of course, legitimate. Indeed generations of Australian soldiers have served, and many still die, to defend this right.

 

But our elected Government lawfully deploys our defence force to war on our national behalf even if some Australians disagree. Whereas previous generations of Australians, of all opinions, instinctively respected the legal and moral citizenship responsibilities to our diggers such Government decisions incurred, many now disregard the need to debate our wars responsibly and sensitively.

 

Jeff Corbett’s article “Finding reason in war” last Thursday was therefore very disappointing, especially in its offensive claims, false moral equivalences and general insensitivity.

 

Australians used to know that our soldiers apply force in a disciplined manner and only in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict. They also used to know enough to know that the Taliban apply force indiscriminately and do not comply with international humanitarian law generally.

 

Jeff also wrongly demeans soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan by invalid comparisons with fatal accidents or illnesses in civil life. Previous generations of Australians would have instinctively appreciated this. They knew the moral and practical distinctions between being deliberately killed or wounded by the enemy in a war, and death or injury resulting from a random accident or illness, no matter how sad or untimely, here at home.

 

Jeff claims, simplistically, that the digger killed this week “died in vain”. This is particularly insensitive to the soldier’s family and friends in their initial grief. Why not wait a week or so to debate our participation in the Afghanistan War and then do so responsibly instead.

 

Then we have Jeff’s bizarre claim that our soldiers are somehow “not driven by a noble cause”. Again past Australians would have known that volunteering to risk your life as a soldier necessarily involves thought, military professionalism and belief in the cause concerned. Plus noble motivations including responsibilities to us, to their mates and to the Afghans they are helping and protecting.

 

Finally, Afghanistan is a complex and morally nuanced war. Wars inevitably are. This also used to be well understood by Australians. But even as Afghanistan overall is a mess, our diggers take great practical and moral comfort in what they can try to fix. Every day they experience, first hand, the security, peace and associated benefits they help bring to Afghans at village level.

 

Finally, inaccurate, offensive and insensitive articles, such as Jeff’s diatribe, emphasise the dangers for a liberal democracy when our troops on the ground understand the war, and believe in their mission, much more comprehensively than the people back home who sent them. Especially where those at home do not realise this.

 

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Saturday, 13 August 2011

The Weekend Australian, Inquirer Section, page 5

 

Back and forth, on legal and moral grounds

Crime and punishment ― morally at least

 

Most public debate concerning David Hicks has always floundered in subjectivity and confusion: outwardly because of emotive criticisms or defences of his actions; more deeply, through commonplace misunderstandings about the facts and law actually applying to his original and current legal predicaments. Objective discussion needs to distinguish carefully between Hicks’ internment and his later, separate, trial ― and their consequences.

 

Hicks’ internment as a captured belligerent under the Laws of Armed Conflict, just like Australian and other personnel captured in previous wars, was entirely legitimate in international law (as reaffirmed by the US Supreme Court’s 2006 Hamdan decision).

 

But the legitimacy of his subsequent, and completely separate, criminal-law plea bargain, trial and sentence by a US Military Commission for terrorist offences remains fiercely contested internationally.  

 

Peter Van Onselen [The Australian, Opinion, August 06] is not alone in believing, incorrectly, that Hicks was “held without charge for more than five years”. Based on such misconceptions, however, he and others view the Hicks saga backwards by not applying the relevant international and Australian law (then and now) in that order.

 

Van Onselen Peter also equates justice with only what the law might say, not with moral justice, and suggests that confiscating Hicks’ book profits as the proceeds of crime would be both illegal and unjust.

 

Our law’s non-retrospectivity principle probably makes such forfeiture impossible legally, especially if Hicks’ perceived crime internationally or domestically was terrorism. But what should be the moral consequences, at least, where his crime was treachery?

 

But Hicks was not prosecuted for treachery in Australia (and ironically not released from internment for criminal trial here much earlier) only due to a legal technicality that was most unjust to the men and women of our defence force.

 

Every Australian has always had a clear, reciprocal, citizenship responsibility to our diggers not to assist an enemy which our government has lawfully deployed our defence force to fight on our national behalf. Where an Australian intentionally joins the enemy in such a war this is unequivocally treachery (and in some cases treason).

 

After the 9/11 attacks, and after a UN-endorsed international force (including an ADF contingent) was deployed to Afghanistan, Hicks voluntarily returned there and served with the Taliban when it was engaged in warfare against that force.

 

Hicks and his apologists are particularly prone to ignore, discount or obfuscate this fundamental detail.

 

Hicks avoided justice by escaping prosecution and probable conviction for treachery, as Wilfred Burchett did for the Korean War, only because Australia’s archaic treachery laws required a war to be “declared” for serving with the enemy to be an offence. But declarations of war had been invalidated by the UN Charter from 1945.

 

Thankfully, and of most continuing relevance, under our reformed 2002 treachery laws, anyone doing now what Hicks did in 2001 would swiftly face an Australian court. We owe our diggers no less.

 

As the extensive omissions, evasions and tendentious claims in Hicks’ diatribe to the gullible show, he remains morally guilty of both treachery and of profiting from it. Even if another legal technicality allows him to keep his ill-gotten gains.

 

 

[The above article was supplemented in The Australian with series of 200-word exchanges between the ADA and Peter Van Onselen, author of the original opinion article commented on above, where he raised several points and misconceptions commonly made in public discussions about David Hicks and sought clarification of some issues.] The full exchange (less the passages omitted and in red below can be found at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/back-and-forth-on-legal-and-moral-grounds/story-fn59niix-1226113610339 )

 

First round:

 

International humanitarian law (IHL) is universal and its Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) apply to all those captured in war under the principle of lex specialis (the most relevant body of law applies). Hicks didn’t qualify for conventional prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention because the Taliban don’t comply with LOAC and IHL generally. Indeed a great irony of the Hicks saga is that no-one except Hicks apologists now, and the Bush administration originally, argue that those captured and interned should not be protected by at least Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions.

 

Hicks was not “held without trial” for a single minute ― at least until his subsequent and separate criminal trial. Just as Aussie PW in World War II were not “held without trial” by the Germans or the Japanese.

 

Even if his later terrorism conviction is found invalid, and his book profits not the proceeds of that particular crime, there is still the moral question at least that Hicks escaped trial here for treachery only because of the Burchett loophole. Members of our defence force remain puzzled why many Australians somehow condone treachery or assume, wrongly, that there is a magic “get-out-of-gaol-free” card for Australians captured in war.

 

Second round:

 

David Hicks remains controversial because his attitudes and actions, then and now, tend to polarise debate towards hard-line positions buttressed by emotive language. The Australia Defence Association has always walked the middle ground by focusing on the facts and the law actually applying.

 

By 2006 we argued for his (supervised) release from internment, before the Afghanistan War ended, on belligerent parole that he not return to the fight. He was no longer a threat and the duration of his internment was broadly equivalent anyway to prison sentences in Australia for terrorist offences.

 

On the evidence available he was not tortured while interned, but the duration and exile obviously encouraged a plea bargain when facing his separate criminal trial and potential prison sentence. Torture is always illegal under international law. Where the US, for a short time, used some coercive practices that Australia regards as torture (such as waterboarding), this was only done by the CIA, not the US military. As a captured belligerent, under the terms of the Geneva Conventions, Hicks was always interned by the US military.

 

His controversial Military Commission conviction, for an offence unknown to Australian (and perhaps US) law at the time, has always meant an Australian court might later decide his profits are not the proceeds of crime for that particular offence.

 

But the overall justice paradox involved, morally and practically, remains that Hicks was tried and found guilty of an offence by the US that he may not have committed (at least technically), but could not be tried in Australia for the offence (treachery) he did commit.

 

Third round:

 

Preserving the rule of law cuts both ways. The commonplace confusion about Hicks, going back to 2001, has been particularly exacerbated by those of his defenders who only cite the law when it suits them. They are keen to cite the US Supreme Court striking down the original military commissions established by presidential order, but ignore two other key parts of the Hamdan ruling.

 

The first reaffirmed the right of the US (and any country) to intern enemy belligerents during a war. The second noted that captured terrorists did not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention but were covered by Common Article 3 of all four Conventions. This confirmed US responsibilities under LOAC as the detaining power and the International Committee of the Red Cross as the inspecting power..

 

There is nothing inherently wrong in principle about military commission trials. German spies and saboteurs were tried by them in World War II. When the commissions were re-established by legislation, with improved safeguards, Australia’s apparent position was that the US was entitled to try Hicks for alleged terrorist offences against US law.

 

Especially when the US was prepared to release him from internment for separate criminal trial in Australia but our archaic treachery laws prevented this.

 

Fourth round:

 

Even fervently held misconceptions cannot change objective reality or wish away its laws. Otherwise we would have perpetual chaos domestically and internationally.

 

David Hicks chose to serve in the Afghanistan War and was captured when doing so. The Geneva Conventions necessarily specify that fighting in a war is not, in itself, criminal internationally unless an additional and specific war crime, or crime against humanity, is committed. As for countless captured belligerents in countless wars, Hicks was lawfully interned to prevent him rejoining the fight and this could have lasted until the Afghanistan War ended.

 

Civil-law concepts such as habeas corpus do not apply to war for obvious reasons. Hicks was never "held without charge", or indeed "incarcerated", as those captured in war cannot be charged or punished for being belligerents.

 

Public confusion about Hicks' internment as a captured belligerent is due to insufficient research about longstanding and universally applicable international law before pontificating.

 

Finally, under international law, the Laws of Armed Conflict only apply to real inter-State or civil wars. Governments can't "declare war" on drugs, tax avoidance or other activities in the legal sense ― and certainly not in any way that would have legal effect internationally and invoke internment under the Geneva Conventions.

 

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24 March 2011

The Australian Financial Review, page 8

 

Serious holes in the latest navy blame game

Clashing perspectives: Why the ADF is perpetually forced to operate equipment well past its use-by date

 

Recent controversy about the poor state of the Royal Australian Navy’s amphibious fleet has again demonstrated three great truths about much public debate in Australia on defence issues.

• First, public understanding is often limited and more influenced by World War II films and popular mythology than up-to-date knowledge about our defence force and indeed the requirements of modern war. This has led to Hence the widespread but incorrect assumption that current problems with Navy amphibious ships must automatically and only be the Navy’s fault.
   

• Second, most media coverage of why our amphibious ships are worn out has been superficial, very short-term in its analysis of causes and often factually incorrect and/or sensationalist. Consequently this coverage it has been quite inaccurate, especially in analysing varied causes and apportioning blame.
   

• Third, those most responsible culturally, institutionally or personally responsible for the neglect of this defence capability (and others) have largely escaped censure.

To supposedly save money, in 2003 the maintenance of the Navy’s ship was largely centralised in the Defence Materiel Organisation and the Navy Support Command was disbanded.

 

Not one recent TV program, radio news grab or talkback radio rant about the Navy or the defence force has reported this. It would seem no newspaper article has registered the importance of this fact either.

 

Similarly, few media stories have noted that the Navy has ably continued to meet all the tasks levied on it by government despite its 40-year old amphibious ships being worn out. Or that unlike Darwin after Cyclone Tracey, northern Queensland was always more likely to be assisted by road and rail links after Cyclone Yasi.

 

Even worse, virtually no media coverage has bothered to examine the root cause issue of why our Navy has to operate 40-year old ships in the first place. Or why most other first-world Navies scrap their amphibious ships around the 25-year mark because they rust on both sides of the hull – more than other ships.

 

Instead, to grab a headline or a rating, seek a scalp, save time in reporting, push a partisan line or even satisfy some conscious or subliminal anti-defence force bias, the media has mostly concentrated on ignorantly blaming the Navy organisationally and its Chief Russ Crane individually.

 

And our politicians, from all parties, have gladly let them do so in order as to divert attention from their own culpability.

 

Moreover, no media and thus public blame has been appropriately apportioned to the organisational management gurus, ministries of Defence and Finance bureaucrats, armchair theorists and expedience-driven politicians from all parties who have forced unsuitable matrix management methods on the support structures of our defence force. This began Beginning in the late 1980s and has continued, particularly since the thoroughly mis-named Defence Efficiency Review in 1997.

 

The result, as the unfairly blamed Chief of Navy is currently experiencing, is that in both the public view of general accountability, and in budgetary structures, he retains the responsibility for operational outputs, but has clearly insufficient control over the financial, administrative, engineering and logistic inputs needed to meet them efficiently in both operational and financial terms. And Even then, like all the Service Chiefs, he is constantly hectored in the current, so-called, Defence Reform Program to make further financial savings even at the real cost of diminishing defence force capabilities and incurring greater long-term financial costs.

 

The real bottom line here is not, however, a financial one.

 

The operational efficiency of a defence force at deterring and winning wars, and its financial efficiency, are often necessarily quite separate requirements conceptually and practically. This is pParticularly the case if a short-term approach to cost-saving holds sway, rather than one focused on efficient long-term investment.

 

As in 1994, when the Keating Government (in which the current Treasurer and Minister of for Defence were prime-ministerial advisers) procured second-hand, partly unsuitable, amphibious ships built in 1970, rather than invest in new, purpose-designed vessels ones suited to Australian operational requirements and regional sea conditions.

 

If Australia had instead obtained new amphibious ships in 1994, or even better around 2000 when we finished rebuilding and refurbishing the second-hand ones, those new vessels would now be under halfway through their 30-year lifecycle. It would also have been cheaper over the long run to buy and maintain new and suitable ships than to adapt and maintain very old and still not entirely suitable ships long past their effective use-by date.

 

Yet when ADF professional advice explains such concepts, then and now, it often meets an ignorant clamour that the defence force somehow “gold-plates” operational requirements. The bitter irony is that the clamourers are almost invariably never those called on to risk their lives in harsh environments, tempest at sea or combat operating the sub-optimal ships, vehicles and aircraft the clamourers advocate instead.

 

In terms of clashing perspectives in planning and investment, the 10-15 year defence capability development cycle and the 20-30 year lifecycle of major weapons platforms and equipment continually confronts the annual budgetary cycle and the 3-year federal electoral cycle. Consequently defence needs requirements continually clash with the much shorter attention span of the public, the media and particularly our politicians ever prone to buying votes by diverting needed defence investment elsewhere for short-term electoral gain.

 

Perhaps if the journalists covering defence issues were qualified and experienced specialists, as they tend to be for business, economic, health and science journalism, the true state of our bureaucratically and financially beleaguered defence force might be better understood by Australian taxpayers.

 

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17 February 2011

Crikey.com, Item 13

Fixing Defence once and for all

 

Richard Farmer’s Chunky Bits, Crikey, Item 15, yesterday, makes a good point in principle about the need to reconstruct the Department of Defence in detail. But in recommending Allan Hawke, a former secretary of that department, to do it (perhaps tongue in cheek) Farmer misses two salient points. First, the department under Hawke remained thoroughly unreformed to say the least, and it was a previous secretary, Sir Arthur Tange, who created the bureaucratic monstrosity in the first place when given sole and unimpeded power to do so by Gough Whitlam.

 

The clear lesson (as with the recent Henry review of tax policy) is no head of a department (or former head) should ever be given sole or primary responsibility to review his or her own departmental structure, role or major policies.

 

On the broader subject of actually reforming the Department of Defence, this needs to start with a genuine first-principles review of its constitutionality, purpose and structure. It also needs to include re-instituting the appropriate constitutional relationship between ministers and the ADF (civil control of the military), and reinforcing the appropriate professional relationship between the ADF and the Public Service ― which is often institutionalised cultural poison under current structural arrangements.

 

Those who disagree with such a first-principles approach need to ponder three key questions left hanging by the 12 odd reviews of the department instituted since 1981 (following the amalgamations in 1974 there was a seven-year cooling-off period). First, why have so many reviews been needed (at fairly regular 2-3 year intervals)? Second, why do they keep being needed? Third, why have none of them ever solved the fundamental problem of ever-increasing departmental unaccountability despite every one of them claiming all the problems had been found and would be fixed?

 

Richard notes that Defence has grown into a "giant beast [that] has become wastefully unmanageable" since its incorporation of the three Service (and Supply) departments in 1974. Defence now has 13 deputy-secretary equivalents, up from four in 1997 and one in 1974. This is a bureaucratic record in Australia. It also now has a desk-bound public service strength many times larger than 1974 (as the 1974 total included the thousands of workers in the then Defence-owned factories and shipyards). The public service strength is now half as big again as the NSW Police Force and little short of the total size of the regular Army. While the defence force is some 30 per cent smaller than in 1991, and 50 per cent smaller than in 1974, the Department of Defence has kept growing, uncontrollably, into a gargantuan, top-heavy, tortuous, ponderous, self-regarding and unresponsive bureaucracy with institutionalised, insufficient, ministerial supervision structurally and numerically.

 

Assuming Richard's quip about reverting to four or five separate departments to be said in jest (because this should not, nor can be done), there are still some constitutional and practical lessons from that era, and from modern comparative practices overseas, that are worth examining and/or instituting and reinstituting.

 

First, proper civil control of the military in a democracy (rather than constitutionally inappropriate control by civilian bureaucrats) means Defence always needs at least three full-time ministers. There needs to be integrated civil control by a senior portfolio minister assisted by two junior ministers; one supervising the defence force and the other the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), following the UK model. None of them should have any other permanent or temporary ministerial responsibilities such as the veterans affairs portfolio (Bruce Billson, Warren Snowdon, etc) or helping fix stuff-ups in the Department of the Environment (Greg Combet)

 

Second, the department should be run by a statutory board answerable to Parliament as the three Service departments and the Supply Department (sort of like the DMO) were before 1976. There were no serious procurement stuff-ups caused by mismanagement under the old boards because someone, including ministers, was always accountable and made sure of it. As with the old boards, the ministers should be full members not pop-in visitors (indeed the Minister for the Navy chaired the Naval Board). Other members should be the Chief of Defence Force (CDF), VCDF, Service Chiefs, the Chief of Capability Development, the Secretary of the Department of Defence, the Chief Finance Officer and the CEO of the DMO. Two or three outside members from commerce (who were not retired ADF officers or former public servants) would also help.

 

Third, a solid look needs to be taken at Defence’s unique, two-boss, diarchic structure, which no other governmental or commercial organisation in Australia, or indeed elsewhere, has ever copied. Not least because it doesn’t work despite every review since 1981 saying it is finally fixed. Moreover, even allowing for the differing strategic responsibilities, force and population sizes, for example, the NZ method of formally separating the defence force and the department (under the same minister) has resulted in much smaller and leaner defence force headquarters and department than in Australia.

 

No objective review of the diarchy is likely to recommend its retention. None of our other federal or state uniformed services (police, fire, emergency, customs, etc) or security agencies have diarchies in control. Even though nobbled by her restricted terms of reference, the last review of Defence led by Elizabeth Proust in 2007 recommended that if the diarchy was to be retained, then real accountability meant the respective responsibilities of the CDF and the Secretary needed to be defined in detail so that joint responsibilities, and therefore the risk of institutionalised unaccountability (both structurally and culturally), would be minimised or abolished. Guess which two of the review’s 52 recommendations were rejected by the Defence hierarchy?

 

Picking an objective review team will be part of the solution as will it having broad, first-principles, terms of reference. Why not Elizabeth Proust again, assisted by Professor Peter Leahy from the University of Canberra (a former Chief of Army) and Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (a former Defence scientist and the only person in the country who fully understands how Defence’s finances work and should work)?

 

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14 October 2010

Crikey.com, Item 10

Rethinking Afghanistan: Risks and consequences need to be assessed

 

The quality, relevance and consequent utility of general public debate concerning Australia’s military commitment to the UN-endorsed International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is often problematic at best.

 

Commonplace arguments against Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan tend to suffer from a factual deficit. Arguments for the commitment tend to suffer from a conceptual one. This is not much different from wider public argument about how Australia is best defended now and in the future ― and for much the same reasons.

 

Unlike the world wars, our small, professionally based, military effort in Afghanistan does not involve or affect Australians on a mass or national community basis. Unlike Vietnam, there is not even some wider involvement through selective conscription and community-based opposition to it.

 

More generally, most Australians only think about their defence force on Anzac Day and then only in an historical sense. We think about contemporary and future defence and strategic challenges even more rarely, even where this involves current wars and their implications.

 

Very few Australians (especially those not of a recent immigrant background) now have any experience of military service or war, and even most extended family discussions of defence matters lack such input. The commonsense and trusted personal observations of older generations who fought in or lived through World War II are no longer with us, no matter whether their counsel would be for or against the Afghanistan commitment.

 

Public opinion is therefore mainly shaped by media coverage. But modern media coverage of defence issues and war in Australia is now mainly by generalist journalists, often political correspondents, rather than experts in the field (as with business, health or scientific journalism). Unlike previous wars, we also no longer have the valuable input from dedicated and experienced war correspondents who deploy with the troops for long periods and gain a thorough grasp of the trends and situations in play.

 

With a few individual exceptions (Brendan Nelson, John Faulkner), the Howard, Rudd and Gillard Governments have all led public debate on our Afghanistan commitment badly and complacently. Parliamentary opposition by the Australian Democrats and especially the Greens has also been ideological rather than evidence-based. No Democrat or Green senator has even visited Oruzgan Province.

 

Australia has very few genuine academic experts on Afghanistan and even fewer without ethnic or religious irons in the fire. Professor Bill Maley from ANU is almost the only one able to provide objective comment based on considerable and wide-ranging research in Afghanistan over decades.

 

The overall result is now a general lack of shared community experiences and memories about how Australia fought and coped with its previous wars, exacerbated by poor knowledge about Afghanistan in general and the situation there in particular. Rather than applying informed or cautious judgement, arguments for or against the Afghanistan War therefore tend to use frames of reference based more on emotion, sympathy for bereaved defence force families, ideology and even defeatist apathy. Ahistoric [factually incorrect or lacking historical perspective or context] examples, often based on popular mythology, also abound on either side of the debate, but more so among the war’s opponents.

 

Warfare is also dynamic and arguments for or against the Afghanistan War often ignore this through hidebound insistence on supposed certainties and the moral self-regard of the proponent . Debating points that might have been valid in the past might not be so now, and vice versa.

 

We are now in a dangerous situation for any liberal democracy at war. Our troops on the ground have an indisputably better belief in the worth of their mission, and a much better understanding of the situation in Afghanistan, the principles at stake and what their presence means at village-level on the ground in Oruzgan Province, than most public opinion back home in Australia. Much public opposition to the war remains markedly uninformed and often arrogantly comfortable in remaining so. Supporters of the commitment, even where better informed, are often just as complacent.

 

Finally, unlike flawed, context-free, largely ignorance-fuelled opinion polling which simplistically asks only whether we should withdraw from Afghanistan or not, a key question for any informed debate is surely what would be the strategic risks and consequences if we do?

 

---

29 September 2010

The Australian, page 14

(also published by "on-line Opinion", 30 September 2010)

 

Commando charges expose complexity of war

 

Australia, not just our defence force, is at war in Afghanistan but most Australians ignore or forget this on a day-to-day basis, partly because our governments mostly do too.

 

When our diggers are killed, wounded or buried, there is momentary sympathy or interest but apathy soon returns. Especially as our wars are now fought by small groups of professionals (including reservists), not by larger forces including conscripts drawn from Australian society more widely.

 

Monday's [27 September 2010] announcement of manslaughter and lesser charges against three Afghanistan veterans has jolted many Australians out of their customary lethargy about defence and strategic issues, just as the Australia Defence Association has been warning the Minister for Defence and senior Australian Defence Force commanders since mid-2009.

 

We have also regularly protested that the time being taken to decide whether charges were warranted or not was increasingly unfair to the diggers concerned.

 

What has perhaps been underestimated is that so few Australians now have enough personal, or even family, understanding of military service or war to discuss such charges in the context of the law applying, its moral basis and the salient facts. We are all also proud of our diggers and there is a natural tendency to stick up for them, come what may.

 

 At one extreme are those who ask how any digger can face a manslaughter charge "because such things happen in every war". At the opposite extreme are those incorrectly describing the incident as a war crime.

 

The truth, as ever, lies towards the middle ground, particularly in matters involving national, unit and individual accountability, in an incident involving the inherent complexity of confused, close-quarter, night-time combat among non-combatant civilians during multi-nuanced counter-insurgency warfare.

 

One general and two specific facts are central to objectively discussing the incident and possible charges:

• in every war every digger has had their use of lethal force constrained by international and Australian law, chiefly the Hague and Geneva conventions;

• some civilian non-combatants were killed by the ADF; and

• the killings were accidental, not deliberate.

 How this battlefield accident occurred has entailed detailed operational and military police investigations, and lengthy deliberations by the Director of Military Prosecutions (a statutory office independent of defence force commanders and political interference).

 

Was the accident one of those unavoidable tragedies that occur in battle? Or did it result, to whatever degree, from actions contrary to rules of engagement, orders for opening fire or other command orders? These are, for all concerned, matters now best tested in court.

 

The soldiers charged are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and to all the legal and moral support they deserve as men who have been prepared to die on the nation's behalf. They must be given the opportunity to clear their names in court, rather than be scapegoated or suffer scurrilous allegations for the rest of their lives.

 

Fortunately their chances of a fair trial have been maximised because the High Court invalidated the previous Australian Military Court in August 2009. Traditional courts martial were reinstituted as an interim measure before the new Military Court of Australia is established.

 

Even more fortunately, the bill establishing the seriously flawed MCA lapsed when the election was called.

 

In a court martial, decisions on guilt or innocence will be taken by professional peers with an understanding of military service and the nuanced and difficult moral and operational quandaries of warfare. Any punishment awarded, similarly, will be decided or mitigated by the same professional peers, just as numerous Australian courts martial for more than a century have successfully balanced the rights of those charged with the interests of justice, and the need for discipline and accountability in the defence force of any democracy ruled by law.

 

Despite lip service by governments of both political persuasions about the unique nature of military service and how they “stand behind our diggers”, the proposed new MCA encapsulates the opposite of both principles.

 

Civilian federal court judges, sitting alone with no jury, and with no requirement for experience of military service or war beyond an undefined "knowledge of the Services", could try soldiers for serious offences committed in war zones. And for offences that would automatically require jury trials for civilian offenders here in Australia.

 

Finally, the big-picture truth involved is that holding the ADF accountable, individually and collectively, underlines the moral, legal and accountability differences between Australia and our enemies and between the causes for which we fight.

 

The Taliban and its Islamist allies reject international humanitarian law and its associated accountabilities.

 

They also treat our difficult adherence to such law, at increased risk to our troops, as not something to be reciprocated (as civilised peoples do and international law requires) but as somehow just a vulnerability to exploit illegally.

 

---

03 August 2010

The Canberra Times, Page 9, (under the heading "There are other, safer, avenues of anti-war protest")

[Passages marked in red were excised from the Canberra Times version only]

 

Thursday, 29 July 2010

Crikey.com, Item 10

Whatever their motivation WikiLeaks undermine international humanitarian law

 

The vast bulk of material recently released by WikiLeaks would not be new in nature to those who keep up with the Afghanistan War or the difficulties and perennial moral quandaries of fighting wars generally. However, this latest material goes well beyond justifiable whistleblowing, such as the earlier helicopter gun-camera film showing probable breaches of the laws of armed conflict by US forces in Iraq.

 

Put bluntly, WikiLeaks is not authorised in international or Australian law, nor equipped morally or operationally, to judge whether open publication of such material risks the safety, security, morale and legitimate objectives of Australian, allied and Afghan troops fighting in a UN-endorsed military operation. Nor should and can groups such as WikiLeaks be so authorised or equipped respectively, especially when they are unaccountable to any responsible authority or international humanitarian law (IHL) in a legal or moral sense.

 

Particularly when there are many alternative avenues available for legitimate dissent about the war that do not endanger our troops, irresponsibly bolster enemy propaganda, repression and will, and do not undermine the universal acceptance of international law.

 

Moreover, all Australians owe a moral and legal responsibility to the troops we send to fight our wars not to endanger or otherwise betray them – even if some of us might disagree with the government decision to send them or oppose the war involved. No other position is tenable in a parliamentary democracy ruled by law and based on reciprocal obligations among its citizens.

 

As an Australian citizen, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange may be guilty of a serious criminal offence by assisting an enemy the Australian Defence Force is legitimately fighting on behalf of all Australians, especially if the assistance was intentional. Whatever his motives, his actions again highlight the need to further amend our treachery laws to also prohibit reckless assistance to such an enemy, because all Australians must exercise reasonable care for our troops even if dissenting from the government decision to deploy them.

 

More broadly, WikLleaks’ actions and declarations, and much of the subsequent media coverage, lacks moral, legal and historical contexts and is often based on incorrect assumptions or sensationalised or biased interpretations of the material.

 

For example, Taliban and Al Qa’eda belligerents captured in the Afghanistan War are not somehow held “without trial” or “detained unlawfully”. As in any war, they are lawfully detained under the Geneva Conventions as the specialist international law applying – and this detention has always been duly monitored independently by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as the designated inspecting power (as has also occurred, incidentally, at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre).

 

They are not subject to “extrajudicial killings” either. Killing enemy belligerents in a war, even without warning, is not a judicial act but lawful combat (if the Hague and Geneva Conventions are complied with). Again the incorrect term “assassination” has been too readily but wrongly bandied around in a sensationalist and out-of-context fashion. And with no regard for the fact that Taliban belligerents do not wear a uniform and are often difficult to distinguish from civilians in a counter-insurgency war.

 

Tragic though it always is, accidentally or unavoidably killing non-combatants (including most but not always all civilians) in combat is also not illegal under IHL unless done deliberately, indiscriminately, or disproportionately to the battlefield objective necessarily involved. The circumstances of each tragic case must be examined, in context, separately, to discern the legal truth and moral consequences applying.

 

In contrast, the Taliban and its Islamist allies largely reject IHL in letter and spirit. They routinely torture and murder prisoners, not treat them in accordance with IHL and detain them under supervision by the ICRC. Non-combatants, including civilians, are routinely targeted and killed by the Taliban without compunction and often indiscriminately and disproportionately.

.

ISAF’s battlefield mistakes on the other hand are almost invariably the result of typical wartime tragedy, accidents and at times incompetence or personal failure, not deliberate or institutional policy. Moreover, ISAF moral standards and operational procedures are necessarily self-correcting with transgressions generally reported, investigated and punished. We should expect no less.

 

The over-arching moral and practical problems that WikiLeaks and its apologists ignore are the clear legal and moral differences between ISAF and the Taliban.

 

ISAF is fighting while applying (however imperfectly at times) the rule-of-law generally, and international humanitarian law in particular, to the difficult circumstances of UN-endorsed warfighting in a thoroughly broken civil society and polity. The Taliban and its Islamist allies on the other hand deliberately reject IHL and treat ISAF’s difficult adherence to this law as merely a vulnerability to be (illegally) exploited.

 

All wars are always nasty, morally confusing and ethically challenging. But all wars are also contests of ideas, morals and, ultimately, will.

 

Responsible criticism of ISAF in Afghanistan is legitimate, necessary and too often deserved. But so is responsible and consistent criticism of the Taliban. Including constant note that it is at the bottom of a legal and moral abyss compared to the legal mandate, moral responsibilities and obligations (even if unreciprocated), and IHL-compliant activities of ISAF.

 

 

Note: [published in Crikey but not The Canberra Times]

Since the loopholes in our archaic (pre-UN Charter in 1945) treachery laws were finally closed by the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits an offence if he or she (among other things):

 

·                   intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

·                   intentionally assists, by ‘any means whatsoever’, another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force (ADF); or

·                   forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

 

---

Monday, 26 July 2010

Crikey.com, Item 16

Separating politics and war

 

Jeff Sparrow (“Should politicians attend military funerals”, Crikey, 23 July, Item 4) seems to be catching up with arguments advanced by the Australia Defence Association for many years.

 

The ADA has long pointed out to both the previous and current governments that they were not explaining our mission in Afghanistan adequately and that public opinion was mainly moving against the war because of this failure. We have also long pointed out that much of this opinion tended to be not as informed of the situation in Afghanistan as our troops on the ground ― and that this growing contrast in knowledge and understanding posed a danger to both national unity, and to the morale and security of the troops so deployed because it irresponsibly encouraged the enemy.

 

We have also always strongly criticised the practice of politicians officiating at farewell and welcome home ceremonies for ADF contingents departing for or returning from overseas deployments. This is because our defence force is necessarily both an apolitical institution and one that defends all Australians equally. The officiating dignitary must therefore always be an apolitical figure.

 

On politicians attending military funerals the dilemmas involved are more nuanced. Modern Australian practice reflects changes in our society since the Vietnam War and its predecessors, and closely matches those undertaken in Canada, New Zealand and virtually all the Western European contributors to the war in Afghanistan.

 

If the grieving family have no objection (and their permission is always sought), we believe that the relevant ministers and their shadows should attend or be represented ― as long as they avoid political capital being made from the attendance and the official mourner representing the Australian people is the Governor-General or some other politically neutral figure.

 

On balance, our political and bureaucratic classes need to attend such funerals in order to confront the bereaved family personally and to grasp more fully the real impact of their decision to commit our defence force to combat operations.

 

With the funeral of Private Nathan Bewes the ADA respects the decision by both political parties to desist from electoral campaigning that day. It is worth noting, however, that one of the overarching reasons why Nathan and our other casualties risked their lives, and died, is to preserve our freedom ― including the right to argue freely and then vote in national elections.

 

---

17 June 2010

Crikey.com

Item 14 (published under the unsuitable heading "Ill-informed pollies and journalists undermine our war efforts")

 

18 June 2010

The Canberra Times

p.23 (a slightly shorter version published under the heading "Battlefield knowledge lost to Parliament – and the public")

 

 

Deciding causes worth winning and dying for?

 

Reactions to the recent combat deaths of two Australian Diggers in Afghanistan again demonstrate serious problems in how we decide to initiate, fight and end our wars.

 

Complex strategic problems such as warfighting require complex solutions forged in sustained and informed debate. But instead we mainly have spasmodic, generally ill-informed and at times even defeatist interchanges, most notably at the fortunately few times when our Diggers are killed defending us.

 

Emotional moments are not conducive to informed public debate about anything. Nor indeed is it appropriate to argue about our wars, especially insensitively or simplistically, while the families and friends of our fallen Diggers are initially grieving their loss.

 

The underlying problem is that Australian society and our political mechanisms have now largely forgotten how to wage war and debate the options and consequences involved responsibly.

 

Most Australians think about defence matters only on Anzac Day and only in an historical or commemorative sense, rather than drawing contemporary or future strategic lessons.

 

Most mainstream media coverage of defence matters is by generalist reporters, political columnists and academics rather than by specialised and qualified journalists (as occurs, for example, in economics, business and science matters). Consequently the quality generally hovers between poor and appalling, although some coverage by Australian foreign correspondents in the Middle East and Afghanistan is very good. In Afghanistan we are fighting our first war since 1940 without an in-country ABC bureau. More generally, no Australian media organ now deploys war correspondents, especially ones able to stay in the country concerned or accompany our troops long enough to understand complex situations properly.

 

Australia’s modern wars are also fought by a small, voluntarily recruited, professional military, not by the large, mass-volunteer and conscripted forces that still resonate in national folk memory each Anzac Day. Unlike even Vietnam, where conscription (if not usually war) involved the families of around one in 40 male 20-year olds, only some 18,000 of Australia’s six million families now have an immediate family member serving in an overseas war zone each year.

 

The vast majority of Australians simply no longer have any personal experience of military service or war. Moreover, there is usually little or no second or third-hand experience even in extended families or broader communities. Common sense judgements about current wars from the parents and grandparents who fought or lived through previous wars are generally no longer available in most family, social and electoral discussions. Discussion about our wars on most blog sites and on talkback radio, for example, is more often than not beset by ignorance, ideology, prejudice and abuse.

 

Experience of war was also widespread in parliament and in Cabinet until the mid 1970s, but the last war-veteran Minister was Tim Fischer (1996-99). Out of 226 federal parliamentarians, Mike Kelly, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, is now the only war veteran (Somalia and Iraq) -- and the first one in the Defence portfolio since Lance Barnard in 1974. His opposition shadow, Stuart Robert, is the only one in parliament with peace-keeping experience (Bougainville).

 

Thirteen parliamentarians have at least peace-time military service, but 11 only as reservists, mostly for short periods, long ago, in very junior ranks. Joe Ludwig, the sole long-time reservist officer, is the only Cabinet minister. Bill Shorten, who served briefly in a university regiment, is the outer ministry’s only example.

 

Over the past decade our governments have often had to decide about using military force in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. While not doubting good intentions, how well do modern cabinet ministers and their political, bureaucratic and academic advisers really appreciate what going to war, and prosecuting war, really mean and need? And has partisan advantage always been subsumed to the real national interest appropriately -- and to any government’s responsibility not to endanger the men and women of the ADF unnecessarily?

 

As ill-informed public debate regularly shows -- and unlike our forebears who learned the hard way about deterring, fighting and winning wars -- most Australians across parliament, the bureaucracy, the media and the electorate seem to have forgotten 10 of war’s key lessons:

• wars are nasty, difficult, rarely short and laced with unavoidable and sometimes irreconcilable moral and strategic quandaries;

• wars are ultimately contests of will and end only when one side gives up;

• well-led national unity is vital and our leaders need to fight with words as well as bullets by explaining why we fight, what is happening and what would happen if we lose;

• all Australians are at war, not just the troops we send to fight, and we all have an enemy that none of us must help;

• warfare is inherently dynamic and surprising, and we must all be resilient to its ups and downs;

• combat means casualties;

• unless we fight to win it is not morally or operationally sustainable to risk the lives of our Diggers in the first place;

• our cause must be one worth fighting and dying for at Digger level;

• the best force protection measures are adequately sized and resourced forces with commanders being allowed to command; and

• when the troops on the ground have a markedly better understanding of the situation than the public back home we have a serious problem.

 

Furthermore, in a globalised world our web-literate enemies now readily monitor our domestic arguments and spread misinformation and propaganda to undermine our national will directly. Any opining that a war might be "unwinnable" or "wrong" therefore needs to be done responsibly and objectively, not in reckless ignorance or ideological indifference to the safety of our troops and Australia’s national interests. Much Australian media coverage of our wars lacks such senses of perspective or responsibility.

 

Finally, limiting our real war aim in Afghanistan to supposed "alliance maintenance" is not a winning strategy in any sense and is not a cause worth dying for.

 

Especially when our over-burdened US ally is increasingly exasperated by such buck-passing anyway, it does not reassure the Afghans we are helping, it perpetuates a risky combat status quo for our troops on the ground, and is suggested by theorists and politicians never called on to do the dying.

 

---

01 June 2010

The Canberra Times

p.11

Solving refugee issues by taking a strategic rather than an emotional approach

 

Our national dilemma with asylum-seeking and illegal immigration strategically, and our public debate domestically, are much affected by factors which Australia shares with very few countries. This is why our public debate on refugee policy tends to dwell emotionally on the symptoms of the dilemma rather than its actual strategic, legal and moral causes.

 

Our international law responsibilities (such as the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol) mean we cannot just make all unauthorised entry to Australia illegal. But conversely, Australian law must be able to differentiate between genuine asylum seekers arriving in an unauthorised manner by boat or jetliner, which is not in itself necessarily illegal, and anyone else who arrives by such means (including bogus asylum seekers and unauthorised immigrants of all varieties).

 

Australia is a much nicer place to live than most other countries, particularly in our near and wider region, and remains one of the four first-world countries with a mass immigration program. We also have a long and impressive history of permanently resettling immigrants and refugees in large per capita and absolute numbers. Both aspects are underwritten by a wide and longstanding national consensus socially.

 

They are also based on an internationally rare political and legal culture that believes Australian nationality and citizenship are not synonymous with any one particular race, ethnicity or religion but are instead based on shared values and loyalties.

 

But there are also now large numbers of overseas-born Australians, and their descendants, who naturally seek to lobby our government to admit their kith and kin as immigrants or refugees - or who otherwise try to get them into Australia by any means. A growing risk here is that these imperatives do not always pay due regard to the overall national interest ― or indeed due adherence to Australian law and the long-term democratic sensitivities and balances of our political system.

 

All these “pull factors” markedly affect the culture, politics and emotion of our public debate, often detrimentally. This especially concerns the mistaken or wilfully evasive assumption that offering asylum must always involve granting permanent residence and then citizenship.

 

This is not and never has been the intention of the Convention. In fact it undermines the Convention’s international acceptance by deterring most countries from ever becoming signatories. It also tends to encourage scepticism domestically about various groups of asylum claimants.

 

This is why our previous system of Temporary Protection Visas, while it had some negative (and preventable) outcomes due to flawed implementation, was very much in accord with the principles, intentions and moral integrity of the Convention.  

 

But the most important factor complicating Australia’s position is the real “push” one that most countries, especially in our near and wider regions, have not acceded to the Convention. The incidence of war or civil strife is not a “push factor” per se but a symptom of the Convention not being truly universal, especially over much of the world where the wars that ceaselessly cause refugees occur.

 

As well as encouraging domestic disharmony about immigration as a whole – and asylum policy in particular – by leading to actual or perceived rorting of entry processes, the asylum-must-be-permanent fallacy also undermines the overall strategic intention of the Convention internationally.

 

A core intention of the Convention, as with Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, is to encourage permanent solutions to conflicts on a regional basis. Neighbouring countries are meant to solve the causes of refugee crises in the first place so refugees can quickly, safely and easily return to their homes to rebuild broken societies and polities. Tragically, the rejection of the Convention by so many countries has meant constant wars, much never-ending destruction of civil society in afflicted countries more widely, the misery of permanent refugee camps across much of the world, and the endemic strategic instability, misery and moral hypocrisy of near-permanent, extra-regional, refugee flows.

 

In terms of Australia’s strategic and moral setting, of the 35 or so countries between the Aegean and Arafura Seas (in the Middle East, West Asia, South Asia and South-East Asia) there are only seven signatories to the Convention (and Turkey rejected its extension outside Europe in the 1967 Protocol). With the partial exception of Israel, the other five remaining (Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, East Timor and Cambodia) are effectively pseudo-signatories who have records of causing refugee flows rather than providing sanctuary.

 

Few other countries in the Asia-Pacific are signatories and much fewer (New Zealand and to an extent PNG) have records of taking their responsibilities seriously in action.

 

Apparently nominal signatories in our wider region include Japan, South Korea, Philippines, China, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tuvalu. China, in particular, is better known as a source of refugees rather than a sanctuary. The same could be said about Fiji and Solomon Islands at times. All four South Pacific signatories have rarely been called upon to offer asylum and this is likely to continue.

 

Even more to the point, Australia’s geographic setting, and to varying extents our first-world economic and socio-political status, tend to place us in the regional frontline for permanent asylum claims from West Asia, South Asia and the Middle East in particular.

 

Australian public debate on refugee policy largely ignores this geo-strategic setting. Consequently it often only involves either beating or puffing ourselves up morally and emotionally over our national willingness or not to accept refugees (either some or all). Alternatively, public debate descends into the advocacy of simplistic and draconian pseudo-solutions, such as trying to deter or punish every refugee or unauthorised immigrant who might come here or alternatively accepting everyone and anyone on an unlimited basis.

 

Both types of behaviour are arguing about symptoms rather than addressing the causes and finding solutions. Moreover, our refugee policy and our associated expectations of other countries are but two of many aspects in our overall strategic relationship with our regional neighbours.

 

Refugee matters must not be allowed to become a defining or persistent problem in such complex strategic relationships. We must also avoid the potential for regional neighbours to pressure us strategically through facilitating extra-regional refugee flows into Australia or not, or in threatening to do so.

 

Over the medium to long term there will be no effective solution, and increasing strategic risks, for Australia until more countries sign the Convention. Particularly in our near and wider region.

 

India, Singapore and Indonesia, for example, would be a good start both morally and strategically. No opportunity should be lost in pointing out this apparent hypocrisy and strategic and moral buck-passing to any Indian, Singaporean or Indonesian you meet.

 

Start next on any Australian or diplomatic apologists advancing red herrings about it somehow being all too hard for these countries. Or those claiming that declared universal responsibilities in refugee matters only apply to Australia and other first-world countries in practice, despite a good take-up of the Convention in South America, the Caribbean and much of Africa and Central Asia.

 

The nub of our enduring problem strategically is that while current numbers of genuine refugees entering Australia appear manageable, this manageability and the potential instability of our domestic unity are inversely proportional to both future numbers, any lessening time period involved, and to any degree of foreign strategic pressure on this and wider grounds.

 

We also need a consistent and strategically viable policy on refugees rather than one that depends almost entirely on the current low numbers for its legitimacy, effectiveness, popular support, international acceptability or purported long-term viability.

 

Hard as it may be politically, socially and morally, tough issues and options need to be addressed. Unless or until the Refugee Convention becomes truly universal legally, morally and in the effect intended – and countries in every region finally look after their own as the Convention intends – it is foreseeable (if not yet likely) that one day Australia might have to threaten to or withdraw from the Convention until it becomes truly universal and effective.

 

We need to think coolly about such dilemmas and potential solutions now, not when a crisis hits, public emotions run high either way and party-political policy auctions risk being swayed accordingly.

 

There are serious problems with the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol which extended its potential application geographically to the whole world but without much take-up in our region. The current situation regarding the Convention is one where the moral buck-passing involved and the strategic instability it causes internationally seem to be worsening.  

 

Unless we think this through as a long-term strategic as well as a day-to-day political and moral problem, the necessary public consensus underlying our mass immigration and refugee policies will weaken seriously and perhaps fatally. Perhaps even to the extent that it results in more pervasive and serious breakdowns in our national unity, leading in turn to major political dissension, disintegrating social cohesion and other national security risks.

 

---

22 March 2010

The Canberra Times

p.15

Allow law to take its course in determining truth of night raid

 

In mid February 2009 a night raid in Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of six Afghan civilians, four of them small children, at the hands of the ADF. Two more children and two adults from this family group were wounded.

 

By definition the incident occurred in a war zone and in territory that is disputed across the physical, military, political and human senses. It also happened in circumstances where formal Afghan legal mechanisms were and remain inoperable ― and clash anyway with long-established cultural and religious mores that contradict Afghanistan’s laws and indeed nominal government structures.

 

Determining truth in such circumstances is difficult. Accurately apportioning responsibility or blame is even harder. Both must be done, however, in order for Australia to comply with international humanitarian law, to reassure Afghans that there is a moral difference between the ADF and the Taliban, and to preserve the integrity of the ADF as the professional defence force of a liberal democracy ruled by law.

 

Operational limitations on the ground, including security concerns, respect for bereaved victims and wider cultural sensitivities affected both the initial operational investigation and the subsequent criminal investigation it recommended. Neither investigation was able to visit the scene of the deaths or interview the survivors and any witnesses at first hand in the same way we would in downtown Australia. Indeed the SBS documentary team covering the incident later ran into many of the same limitations.

 

Discovering the discerning truth must also account for the background context. In the final analysis any war is a contest of will and ends when one side gives up. This means in both the Afghan and international arenas the wider public information and propaganda clashes can never be entirely separated from the shooting on the ground.

 

In this particular incident, and with the Taliban insurgency seeking to win popular support generally, the Taliban have naturally sought to portray what happened so as to boost their cause and undermine ours. Moreover, because of justifiable anger, genuine allegiance, Taliban intimidation or a combination, the objectivity of in-situ evidence from the villagers involved may be problematic in a legal sense. As the generally balanced SBS Dateline documentary showed, this is not an insurmountable problem as long as it is recognised. In this case many of the known facts do not need much embellishment by the Taliban anyway.

 

The ADF operates in Afghanistan within a legal framework of Australian, Afghan and international law (and in accordance with appropriate constitutional and professional mechanisms). The overall legal basis of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan stems from the UN Charter in general and several UN Security Council Resolutions in particular.

 

The conduct of our military assistance is governed by that specialist branch of international humanitarian law known as the laws of armed conflict, chiefly based on the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The Taliban on the other hand do not respect these laws and regard our adherence as a vulnerability to be (illegally) exploited. They have no process for investigating breaches of these laws. Indeed they reward not punish acts such as the indiscriminate targeting of non-combatants.

 

Under the umbrella of the laws of armed conflict our troops are subject to rules of engagement governing the overall application of armed force to the particular circumstances of the Afghanistan War. There are also International Security Assistance Force commander’s directives applying to all troops in the alliance on matters such as night raids on Afghan compounds. On the ground, the rules of engagement are further broken down into orders-for-opening-fire which tell each digger when they can and cannot use lethal force.

 

Interpreting these rules and orders in the hectic chaos of battle can be tough, certainly much tougher than subsequently in peaceful court rooms. Accidents of all kinds also happen frequently in the confusion of war. But deliberate killing contrary to these rules and orders is generally and necessarily illegal because the alternative is the barbarism of our Taliban enemy. Accidental killing can also be illegal if resulting from actions that could be reasonably foreseen, or from professionally reckless or negligent use of force by those commanding, planning or doing the fighting.

 

No-one is disputing that something went dreadfully wrong in this incident. The operational procedure flaws have already been fixed. But nothing more should be allowed to go wrong in finding out how, why and who might be at fault.

 

All Australians should be reassured that there have been no cover-ups, nor delays beyond those dictated by the operational situation in Afghanistan and the time needed for due legal process. We should also be encouraged that our national war-fighting systems are so self-correcting. Unlike the Taliban we have professional and legal accountability processes than can objectively investigate battlefield mistakes.

 

The professional debate within the ADF about possible underlying causes of the incident is also a necessary and professionally healthy phenomenon. It shows there is no institutional culture of deceit, groupthink or resistance to appropriate and transparent supervision of the ADF’s use of armed force.

 

Criticism of the ADF for the time taken in investigation, or its care not to prejudice due legal process by public comment, is uninformed, unfair and invalid. We should let the law take its course. Only the statutorily independent Director of Military Prosecutions can properly decide whether any ADF personnel should face criminal or disciplinary charges.

 

---

02 March 2010

Toowoomba Chronicle

p.19 (published under the heading "National interest dictates Borneo Barracks' future")

 

Facing Cabarlah’s future beyond Borneo Barracks

 

Borneo Barracks, Cabarlah, began as a World War I training area. A militia battalion of the 7^th Brigade was based there in 1940-41 and the senior wing of the Army Staff School was located there in 1942-45. The 7^th Signal Regiment has been located at Borneo Barracks in various guises since 1946. With the exception of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, this is by far the longest continuous unit occupation of the same barracks in the entire regular army.

 

For many years this relatively isolated location suited the specialist operational nature of the regiment’s work and the high degree of security and subterfuge then involved. The high frequency-based communications technology of that era, and the relative electronic solitude of the area, also suited a base on the Darling Downs.

 

None of these strategic priorities, operational requirements and technical conditions still apply. The longer-term future of the base has consequently come up for regular discussion over recent decades.

 

The financial costs of maintaining what is effectively a more expensive single-unit base also increasingly need to be balanced against the option of relocating the regiment to a larger, multi-user, base where support facilities can be shared and numerous recurring efficiencies gained.

 

Local discussions about the future of Borneo Barracks, on the other hand, seem to be caught in a recurring time warp where nothing ever changes.

 

They also often appear largely based on some fundamental misunderstandings about why Australia has a defence force in the first place. While there is naturally community reluctance to even contemplate that the barracks may one day be closed, various strategic, operational and budgetary realities affecting our defence force mean that such a closure is inevitable.

 

Local arguments to retain Borneo Barracks in seeming perpetuity naturally revolve around local issues. These include the perceived necessity of the commercial, rental, social and school and childcare enrolment inputs the barracks brings to the community of the greater Toowoomba area. Given the long-term residential stability of the unit, the sale of a large number of privately-owned houses and Defence-owned married quarters might also temporarily depress the local housing market.

 

The total annual economic loss is often cited as $105m. But this figure ignores the gains from future development of the barracks site for other uses such as housing, an educational institution or the conference industry. It is probable that any future use would keep the golf course (built by years of unit and member volunteer labour) as a draw-card asset ― especially as the course has been self-supporting for decades.

 

The local focus of objections to the base closing is understandable. The central weakness of the associated arguments is that they ignore the primary purpose of our defence force. This is to protect Australia as a whole by maximising the ADF’s capacity to deter and if necessary win wars. Maximising the return to all Australian taxpayers from the defence budget is also important.

 

The job of the Department of Defence is defence not regional development. The economic advantages of ADF bases to local communities are and must remain a side benefit not the main game.

 

The overall national interest must always be the priority when making decisions about where our defence force needs to be based. Consequently, the long-term strategic dispositions of our defence force, especially where each and every unit should be located, must be decided on the basis of overall national priorities.

 

These chiefly include each unit’s strategic and operational capabilities and the overall long-term cost of the ADF to the national taxpayer. From time to time such priorities change as national strategic requirements are re-prioritised, the force structure of the ADF is remodelled or technological developments occur.

 

In the 1990s for example, we saw the Army’s 1^st Brigade move from Sydney to Darwin because of defence strategy reviews, the need for access to nearby and much larger training areas for armoured and mechanised forces, the high cost of housing defence force families in the Sydney area and the lengthy commuting times often involved.

 

Cabarlah may at first glance meet most of the ADF basing criteria discussed in the 2009 Defence White Paper. It is also a popular base among ADF personnel and their families.

 

But the overall economic argument pushing base rationalisation nationwide is that the ADF needs to be more concentrated in a smaller number of larger and better sited bases. Existing single-unit bases such as Cabarlah, and Woodside in the Adelaide Hills, are likely to be a high priority for closure because of the confluence of financial, operational and strategic efficiencies to be gained.

 

In the case of the 7th Signals Regiment, these significant strategic and operational efficiencies include the option of collocating it with other electronic warfare units at the new superbase at RAAF Edinburgh near Adelaide.

 

The initial cost of relocating a unit from a single-unit base is not small but this is soon recouped by the long-term savings from relocation to a multi-user base, and the through-life cost of new facilities compared with ever-increasing maintenance costs on much older ones. The crunch time will be when Cabarlah’s older buildings and facilities require significant upgrades, particularly over the next decade or so. The high cost of this is likely to force a decision that the money would be better invested in new buildings and facilities in a multi-unit base with a long-term and operationally viable future.

 

The biggest obstacle to ADF base rationalisation is generally the local federal member of parliament, followed by the local council and the chamber of commerce. This is their right and indeed their duty.

 

Being located in a marginal electorate has also often delayed base rationalisation. Being located in a safely Opposition-held one can speed things up.

 

But keeping any base open for no reason other than local economic or political advantage is really asking the taxpayers in the rest of the country to disproportionally subsidise the community concerned. This is not fair, viable or responsible in the long run from a whole-nation viewpoint.

 

In the particular case of the Darling Downs, which also has the Army Aviation Centre at Oakey, there are really no grounds other than temporary local priorities to delay or stop the eventual closure of Cabarlah.

 

Surely it is now better to concentrate on the future of the Cabarlah site when it is no longer Borneo Barracks.

 

Neil James is executive director of the Australia Defence Association (www.ada.asn.au). He thoroughly enjoyed his posting to Cabarlah from late 1979 to mid 1982.

 

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01 March 2010

Crikey.com

Item 12 (published under the heading "Don't spread Combet too thin on defence")

 

Yet More Diversion of Greg Combet's Capacity for Ministerial Supervision

 

The Prime Minister’s announcement that Greg Combet is to take over many of Peter Garrett’s ministerial responsibilities in the environment portfolio has more than a party-political or issue-of-the-day dimension.

 

Once again, the necessary ministerial supervision of the ADF, and government capacity for appropriate attention to its responsibilities to the men and women the defence force comprises (and which it often sends into combat), have been sacrificed in the interests of political expediency and the short-term electoral and media cycles.

 

Greg Combet, as Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, is already responsible for all the Defence functions previously undertaken by himself when Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement and those previously undertaken by Warren Snowdon as Minister for Defence Science and Personnel – plus all his efforts and responsibilities as the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change. This latter aspect was described as only temporary when first levied but has now dragged on for nearly a year. Even more to the point, it appears that climate change matters are taking up about 80 per cent of his time.

 

On top of all this, Greg Combet now has the task of sorting out various Department of the Environment functions in place of Peter Garrett.

 

Minister Combet is very competent but surely there are limits to even his talents, time and attention?

 

Surely there are other junior ministers that are considered competent and who can be drafted in to assist or replace Cabinet Ministers when the Rudd Government encounters political, policy delivery or administrative difficulties?

 

The diversion of Minister Combet highlights the need for the Minister for Defence to be assisted on a permanent basis by two junior ministers with no other responsibilities. The Department of Defence is, after all, the biggest employer and landowner in the country, we are fighting a war, and there is a need to pay close attention to the necessarily long-term plan to rebuild the ADF’s force structure after decades of comparative neglect by both major political parties in the 1980s and 1990s. The Minister for Defence may one day also not be someone with the capacity of Senator Faulkner.

 

As the ADA has maintained for several years, and as the British do, Defence needs a full-time junior Minister for the Defence Force – not just its personnel aspects – who can cohesively address in an integrated way both the operational and personnel sides of the ADF coin. This would also help free up the Minister for Defence as the portfolio minister so he can concentrate even more on challenging high-level strategic and corporate responsibilities – often with a very long-term focus when compared to other portfolios.

 

Defence also needs a full-time junior Minister for Science, Technology and Procurement to supervise the DMO and DSTO. Combet has done wonders with sorting out many procurement and defence industry policy matters. Just think how much more he could do if not also having to address personnel matters, often in isolation from their operational employment aspects, (and having to fix climate change and now environmental matters outside the Defence portfolio).

 

As happens in the UK, a structure of one senior and two junior ministers in Defence would also allow career progression whereby suitable junior ministers can actually be groomed for eventual responsibilities (often after time in other portfolios) as the senior portfolio minister in Defence.

 

A three-minister structure would also help avoid Defence getting stuck with less competent junior ministers or parliamentary secretaries who are placed there as a political reward or to give them profile in marginal seats without supposed political risk – as occurred far too often during the early years of the Howard Government and at times under Hawke and Keating.

 

Other portfolios with smaller spans of responsibility and less responsibilities have more than two Ministers, why not Defence?

 

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